On Day 72 of the NHL lockout, owners and players agreed to allow federal mediators to get involved, infusing some optimism into the process and introducing a new labor-law related buzzword into the sport's lexicon.

Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Director George H. Cohen, who helped resolve last year's NBA and NFL lockouts, released a statement saying he "had separate, informal discussions with the key representatives" before the announcement.

“At the invitation of the FMCS, and with the agreement of both parties, the ongoing negotiations will now be conducted under our auspices," Cohen wrote.

The process will begin Wednesday, amid the latest seeming dead-end in a work stoppage that threatens the 2012-13 season and has already forced the cancellation of all games through Dec. 14, the Jan. 1 Winter Classic and All-Star Game.

NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly confirmed the agreement.

"While we have no particular level of expectation going into this process, we welcome a new approach in trying to reach a resolution of the ongoing labor dispute at the earliest possible date," Daly told the New York Daily News.

Both sides had said in the past that mediation was an option. It's essentially a formalized way of attempting to find common ground, and is not legally binding—it failed during the 2004-05 lockout, for example, though ESPN's Pierre LeBrun notes that at the time, the NHLPA hadn't agreed upon the institution of the salary cap. Owners were hell-bent on that, so finding middle ground was near impossible.

Cohen, as a former member of the NHLPA board, can't mediate the process, so he assigned deputy director Scot L. Beckenbaugh, director of mediation services John Sweeney, and commissioner Guy Serota to do it instead.

Serota caused some initial waves—a Twitter account appearing to belong to him (@GuySerota) made the rounds after the initial announcement. It was, for lack of a better term, weird, and filled with bizarre tweets at celebrities and off-color jokes, many of which were related to "The Late Late Show," with Craig Ferguson. Upon discovery, it was deleted almost immediately, then came back scrubbed of the bizarre tweets.